Checking what VT sugar makers are doing

[DoubleBrookMaple]

Still going strong.. 800 gallons on hand today. got to catch up!
Sap is running well again today.
Sap ran well all day yesterday, and stopped by 20:00 last night when it reached near freezing. It stayed at 31 degrees for several hours, and sap is running today at 1.6%. My sap never seems to vary from 1.5% this year since very early on in the season.
Processed and boiled just 400 gallons last night, and still getting AR. Rapid freeze, (which according to Dr Tim is contrary to the ideal slow freeze) to 27ish will occur tonight.
On a personal note...
Brutal day yesterday, as I collected more than 250 gallons from my 90 buckets after the gusher, as most were overflowing. A very small number has some cloudiness, maybe left over from previous run. My buckets are in hillside woods. It takes me 4-5 hours to collect. My back cannot handle this, honestly. I have to quit buckets, but it's hard to let the sap go.... Sounds like I need to design a sap collection hose sucker system for next year! Something with a 100' hose with a remote switch and foot valve.... Found my off season challenge.

[spud]

Raining hard here at the border. Temp is 40 with a slight breeze. Sap is running 650GPH. Sap is testing at 1.9% today.

Spud

[Sugarmaker's dad]

Sap ran steadily but not too hard all day. Enough to have 3,400 gal to run through the RO tonight and get the membranes washed. Sugar was back up to 2.1 Tomorrow should be great. The rig is all cleaned and ready to go early.

[JoeJ]

My 2,145 taps in Jericho overflowed the 3859 gal tank from 6:00 PM yesterday to 6:00 AM this morning. 1.8 gal sap per tap in 12 hours! Sap total from last evening to this evening was 5,810 gals, 2.7 gal sap per tap. Too bad the sap only JUMPED way up to 1.3% from 1.2%.

Joe

[northwoods_forestry]

Emptied out the woodshed last night so I'm going to call it a wrap for the season. Finished up at .21 gallons/tap. Doesn't sound that impressive, but this was a new production record for us. After the last cold snap, the grade went from VDark to Amber and finished up last night at Dark.

Best of luck to all you folks up north. Looks like you all should be having a great season too!

[spud]

Hope you enjoy your summer Northwoods. I was able to get 7100 gallons yesterday. About 2/3 of that sap came from the lower woods. The upper woods was pretty cold yesterday and only gave a little. Supposed to get full sun today so maybe sap will start running by noon.

Spud

[GeneralStark]

Sap ran pretty well here since Wednesday. Probably close to 2000 gal. up to freeze up last night since 4 pm Wednesday. Never really got too warm here yesterday so it just moderately ran all day. Too bad all this sap which is now 16% in the head tank is likely going on the ground today. Started boiling last night and the foam in the rear pan was out of control. Would shut the blower off to keep it from flooding the sugarhouse, then try again. Same thing. Finally it got to a point where we could moderately boil without overflow with some defoamer, but the defoamer didn't seem to do much. Drew off some syrup which seemed good, and besides the weird foam in the back pan everything seemed normal.

Then we started drawing off some really dark, weird tasting syrup (very burnt) and then the front pan started to scorch. Shut down the blower and flooded syrup pans and assessed the situation and level was fine but the foam from the back pan had moved to the syrup pans and we were essentially boiling foam. Tried again with no luck. The syrup that came off was also ropey. Very strange. At this point we called it a night and drank a beer and ate bacon and pancakes in the sugarhouse while the rig cooled. Disappointing and frustrating to say the least. Yesterday I cleaned the front pans as the niter scale build up was impressive. There was nearly one inch of scale piled up in the syrup channel. Looks like I will be draining and cleaning the whole rig today and starting over in order to continue the season. It's tempting to quit but the sap has still been good (though 1.3%) and no indications of budding. The syrup we made last night was ropey and burnt but not buddy.

The question I still have is why the bad foam and then why the ropey syrup. Did the sap in the flue pan ferment? It has been cold and the last boil was Wednesday so doesn't seem likely. Or did the sap in the preheater ferment? The only thing that was unusual was the last boil I had to rush off so instead of the head tank completely draining, there was about 10 gal. left in the head tank. I dumped this before cleaning tank yesterday, but is it possible that this ended up fermenting as the rig was cooling off and some ended up in flue pan?

Anyway, any thoughts from you experienced guys would be appreciated.

[DrTimPerkins]

We had the same very good sap run as Joe J. Sap sugar went up from 1.7-1.8 to 2.0-2.1% after the freeze. Syrup came up 2 grades. Made almost 200 gal, putting us at 1,640 gal total or 0.38 gal/tap. Looks like a good couple of days coming up.

[DrTimPerkins]

Sap is testing at 1.9% today.

That's up some isn't it Spud?

[spud]

I am very happy with my sugar content. Just down the road from me their 1.4 and I don't understand why.

Spud